The JeskyBera Blog is the writing home of Jessica Ribera.

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Dec 3 quick info

Ezra's liver checked out fine!!! We are so glad, and I'm relieved to not have that nagging fear in the back of my mind anymore. Every little whine would make me think, "oh no! does your liver hurt?" His white blood cell count is back to normal too. We are thanking God. The prayers now? "Please heal Ezzie's ear infection!"

Ok, I have time, so I'll give you the story on the ear. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving we all got sick, all three of us. This was especially alarming for me given Ezra's lack of white blood cells to fight illness. The result: our second page of our health care provider in a week. She said to just keep people's hands and faces off of him. He seemed to be ok anyway. He just was really stuffy and had a little adorable cough that had us saying, "He's got the black lung, Pop!" Sunday, Ez got even more slimy. (Of course, throughout all this, I'm just dying inside thinking that the poor baby is getting so sick because of the lack of anti-body-full breastmilk. I think he's only getting around 6-8 ounces from me a day.) On Monday, Ez was not himself as he seemed a little listless and wouldn't smile at me as much as usual. He also wasn't eating well. That freaked me out given the starving issue and the fact that we still hadn't heard about his liver. By Monday afternoon, Ezra was unable to sleep, unable to eat, and crying in pain. I could get him calmed down, and sweet boy that he is, he would still smile through his little tears at me every now and then. He was crying this shrill, sad cry every time he burbed, coughed, or even looked at a bottle. I immediately suspected that his ears were hurting, although he wasn't tugging at them. Now that I think about it though, he was sort of burrowing that side of his head into me. Poor guy!

OK- here's the really sad part. I had been planning to attempt to join my friend Claudia at her ProRobics advanced aerobics class on Monday nights for probably like 6 weeks or so. That Monday, since Ezzie mostly takes the bottle all the time anyway, I was planning to go; and Brendan was all ready to come home a smidge early from work. Well, I called Claudia to say that I wasn't going to go because Ezzie seemed so miserable. When Brendan came home, he very lovingly convinced me to go to the class since Ez would be sick whether I was there or not. I decided to go, and I had a good time (even though I could only hack it for about 1/2 the class because I'm SO OUT OF SHAPE!). When I got out, I had a text from Brendan that he needed me. I started to panic and called him. I could hear Ezra SCREAMING in the background. Brendan, attempting to sound calm, said that he'd been that way for a while and didn't know what to do. I sped home like a bat out of hell. I almost turned on my emergency flashers. I was crying too! I burst in the door, and Brendan had calmed Ez a bit; he was just whimpering in Brendan's arms. Ezzie saw me and sort of reached out and started crying big again. I just about died! Poor, poor, sweet, sweet baby! Ez continued to shriek. If there was one thing I learned from the whole "starving" episode, it's that when Ezzie complains, something is REALLY wrong. Third page to Leslie in a week. She said that I could take him to Children's if I thought we should. How do I know? That's why I called! (Leslie is WONDERFUL; don't get me wrong.) So, I just prayed, "God, please let me know what to do." Ezra cheered up a bit. He even gave me a couple little smiles. So, I felt like I could wait until the morning to take him to the doctor, especially since I felt that what Ez really needed was a good, comfortable sleep as soon as possible. Ez proceeded to get some food down and then slept for a 5 hour stretch and a 3 hour stretch.

In the morning, we went to Leslie; and sure enough, he had one very red ear. When I asked Leslie if I was abusing my pager privileges, she said, "Oh no! I think you're doing great. You're appropriately anxious right now." Besides, I was right. Something was really wrong with him! I was just relieved that it was a mundane ear infection and not his liver!